I had an email today to tell me that ASDA were going to discontinue the use of plastic bags in their on-line shopping services. To be honest we went back to plastic bags during lockdown because it was simpler with the deliveries and my arthritis. We paid 40p a week extra and most weeks we got a couple of bags and a load of loose shopping so we discontinued it. TESCO was even worse with their tray liners – massive bags with no purpose once they had been used for shopping delivery, and too big for a man with arthritic fingers to lift.

Back at yesterday’s post, yes, it was the nuns. I have dealt with nuns before when I was selling poultry and always found them charming people, despite their portrayal in fiction. I would, however, hate to get on the wrong side of one as they always seem to be ladies of strong character. I have never dealt with them in the shop, though we have dealt with church volunteers, church wardens, temple elders and priests in the shop. The last vicar wanted a Roman coin to illustrate his sermon to a group of kids (render unto Caesar etc) and we also managed to sell him a widow’s mite (all those Sunday school classes as a kid finally paid off!). And yes, visitors to religious locations do take the opportunity to unload their holiday change. The local Sikh temple brings in regular boxes of foreign coins – mainly rupees and Canadian dollars – which I think come from an appeal for foreign change and the local Catholics brings in quite a lot that gets put in collections. There is probably a lesson to be learnt there about the relative values of the two religions…

This afternoon, by coincidence, we had a phone call from the lady at the catholic Aid Foundation who is going to bring us some boxes of donated coins on Friday morning. It seems this is a week for me to indulge in religious practices.

There were no orders this morning so I used my time before opening to write this post and email it to myself. I’m just adding a few bits, then I’m going to watch TV with a cup oftea and feel virtuous at having completed my blog post before I needed to panic.

This is, I think, the first time that technology has been employed to write the blog. Apart from computeres, but they don’t count because they are just big electric typewriters.